by Stephen Cole
We let him work it out for himself. We feel warm all over as he starts to chuckle.
‘Hidden in the stars,’ we whisper.
‘You know, I believe we stand a real chance now, my dear. Yes, Denni won’t have expected such resourcefulness. Those crystals were hidden most ingeniously, most ingeniously indeed.’ He titters to himself. Then his voice hardens. ‘I shall contact the others and inform them. Don’t be tempted to broadcast this good news across our little network. Remember, the Schirr infection is intensifying in Roba and Tovel, and poor Frog. If they overhear… so might others.’ It’s strange, we can hear an echo of his voice in our mind, but it’s other words that are sounding. As though he’s having other conversations too, even as he speaks to us. ‘Those little gems may yet give us the advantage in this struggle. Once you’ve finished here, head for the control room. Be on your guard. I shall join you.’
Shade’s just looking at us, the smile gone from his face. He’s puzzled. We realise the Doctor was speaking to us in private. We tell Shade the gist of what he said.
‘It doesn’t feel right, keeping this some sort of secret,’ he says. ‘You heard Haunt. We’re supposed to work together. A team. If we don’t trust each other…’
He tails off, looks at us, pained. ‘The Doctor wouldn’t have told us to keep it secret if he didn’t think it important,’ we say. ‘We should go straight to the control room like he asks.’
Shade nods doubtfully. We press on regardless.
To witness these events from Shade’s viewpoint, select section 24 on here
To switch to Ben’s viewpoint, select section 10 on here
To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 15 on here
13
Roba
We’re –
We’re looking through Schirr eyes, at our friends, our fellow disciples lined up on the platform in heroic golden light.
We all feel so old. Relics. Old and hollow as human threats. Empty promises.
Pallemar has betrayed us all and the master knows it now.
He towers over the traitor, covered in blood. He’s bludgeoned Pallemar’s body, torn his flesh open as if looking for a thing in him that has turned him from our cause.
How much Pallemar has told the humans we can’t know. Enough to buy his life and diplomatic immunity. He thought the master’s ambition too overreaching. In contrast his own stretches no further now than to be allowed to live. He wriggles in his chair, begging. Ten make the rituals strong. Pallemar must live. It must be ten.
Like him we watch his deep dark blood spurt out sluggishly from the holes the master has torn in him.
It doesn’t matter that Pallemar will die. The master has learned something new. He says we will become more than ten, many more. All we need shall be supplied. The plan will go ahead.
Puny, we stumble and blunder up on the stage. With the others we take our place. The master speaks of unexpected saviours.
He teaches us our lives will go on even as he blows open our bodies with his gun.
The air begins to hiss out of the stronghold we have fashioned here. It will not fill this room again until salvation is at hand. The master will be waiting, ready. For time will touch us soon and put us to sleep. We may know rest now while he will go on, surviving his single endless moment of death. When we are all dead he will stand alongside us and turn his gun on himself.
A shard of glass hovers charmed in the air to our left. The master’s key. An escape switch to be thrown the day new life shall come to us. Time will run back. Our wounds shall be undone and we shall live again.
The others are screaming out as they die. Our nose twitches in pleasure at the sweet smell of their open flesh. The master’s gun fires. We scrabble with both hands for our precious guts as they dribble out, feel heat and darkness. The last of the air seeps from the room leaving only death, only darkness as time stops.
Blackness. Cold.
Blackness.
To switch to Frog’s viewpoint, select section 16 on here
To return to Haunt’s viewpoint, select section 17 on here
14
Ben
There’s a red haze up ahead in the dark, like neon. This could be an Amsterdam sidestreet in winter. Except we doubt some leggy blonde with some bad English is waiting round the corner.
We grip poor old Roba’s gun as tight as we can.
Through some maze of red lines floating in the air, we see it’s only Creben. Not quite the blonde, but we’re less likely to catch something nasty. Probably.
‘Creben. I’m glad to see you.’ The red lines look almost like some floating net, waiting to catch anyone who comes by. ‘You all right? What’s all this?’
‘It’s what we came here to fix. That’s all.’
We look at him. ‘That’s all? This is it! We’ll be all right!’
‘We’ll be able to breathe for a while longer, certainly. But since Denni brought us here with the intention of changing us into something else, it was never likely we were going to suffocate before that happened, was it?’
That told us. Take down the bunting. ‘One of them fleas got up your jacksie, did it?’
He’s not listening. Looking at us, dead suspicious. ‘Where’s Tovel?’ he says. ‘Weren’t you with him?’
Yeah, but we just left him on his tod to get on with it. We don’t want to have to tell that to Creben.
‘He’s not good. I had to leave him.’
He’s probably poking about in our head, checking us out. ‘Did you now,’ he says sceptically.
‘Yes, I did.’ Like he’d have done any different. ‘He can’t move, Creben, all right? He’s half-turned into one of them.’ Just the thought of it makes us feel sick. We shut our eyes, try and reach out to him, but it’s a no-go. We’re just not good enough at this caper. ‘Anyway, the Doctor said I should leave him. S’pose it makes sense. You know, try and help the rest of us before going back to help him.’
‘And what can you do?’ Creben asks. Smug basket.
It’s not actually a bad question. But we don’t have to answer it, because suddenly Haunt’s screaming in our head: ‘Do all you can.’ We glimpse heavy stone. ‘Work together.’ Hooked grey talons reaching out for our face. ‘Keep the neural network open. That’s an order.’
Her voice just stops.
‘She’s out of the web,’ Creben mutters.
‘Dead?’ He doesn’t reply, and there’s my answer. ‘But the Doctor was with her!’
‘I’m still here, my boy.’ Thank God. ‘Marshal Haunt ran on ahead, we saw someone…’
‘Denni?’ we ask.
The Doctor’s thinking stuff through, we can tell. ‘It seems highly likely, yes,’ he says.
Wonderful. Still out there, still psycho. Haunt’s dead, now. ‘Thought this network thing was meant to help us watch out for each other?’
‘And through each other.’
That’s Tovel. For a second we look at our communicator, like he’s talking through that, but of course, he’s banging on inside our ears.
‘You all right, Tovel?’ We’re still looking at the communicator. Maybe it might boost our voice or something, make us less faint.
‘Comes and goes,’ breathes Tovel. At least he’s not just staring into mid-air. Stay on side, mate. You can do it. ‘Now listen,’ he says. ‘Forget Haunt, you have to. Concentrate on the circuit display. If the Doctor’s right, it’ll take two of you to make the repairs on that thing.’
‘Tell us what to do,’ says Creben quietly. He’s staring at the glowing red maze, dead intently, like it’s some group palm and he’s reading all our lifelines.
He’s got that prissy little smile of his back on his face.
If you have not yet witnessed Marshal Haunt’s severance from the network, select section 11 on here. Then return here and select another viewpoint
To witness these events from Creben’s viewpoint, select section 18 on here
To switch to Polly’s viewpoint, select
section 7 on here
To switch to Shade’s viewpoint, select section 8 on here
15
Creben
The work is routine. The repair process is perfectly logical. Once you express the sum of the integers as a –
‘Whoever done this knew what they were doing,’ says Ben.
‘They did,’ we agree. They knew they had to make it simple enough even for the likes of him. ‘They certainly did.’
We take the last fizzing bundle of cables from his sweaty hands. ‘This should be the last of the links.’
Before we can make the final repair, the Doctor’s voice sounds in our skull. ‘Good news, my friends. Polly and Shade have the crystals. We can reset the coordinates and steer ourselves far from Morphiea’s noisome influence.’
We hesitate, unsure how to react. To us, this scarcely seems possible.
‘We should not make this known to all in our network,’ the Doctor goes on.
‘As we saw the Schirr through Roba’s eyes,’ we say, ‘you think they can see through his?’
‘And Tovel, and Frog, too, are no longer dependable,’ mutters the Doctor.
Not just them.
‘I think we were allowed to complete these repairs,’ we say. ‘Denni could have sent a hundred angels to take us here. She’s been waiting for something… Just keeping us busy…’
‘Perhaps so,’ the Doctor concedes. ‘But Denni won’t have expected us to find those crystals. Hidden most ingeniously, most ingeniously, yes.’ He chuckles. It’s strange, we can hear an echo of his voice in our mind, but the words are different. We wonder how many conversations he’s having at once. ‘Those little gems may yet give us the advantage in this struggle. Once you’ve finished here, head for the control room. Be on your guard. I shall join you.’
We plant our handful of red vines deep in a misty circle of amber light. They glow contentedly. The last of the harm is undone.
‘All done and dusted,’ the boy says strangely. ‘Let’s get back to the control room, meet the others.’
We start to agree. Then the voice of a Schirr purrs out to us. A voice we know straight away from a dozen gloating broadcasts system-wide after the dust has settled on each new ruined world he’s left behind.
To witness these events from Ben’s viewpoint, select section 10 on here
To switch to Polly’s viewpoint, select section 19 on here
To switch to Tovel’s viewpoint, select section 23 on here
To switch to Shade’s viewpoint, select section 26 on here
Or you may withdraw from the neural net – but only after experiencing Frog’s perspective. Select section 27 on here
16
Frog
Thank you and goodnight, Dax Roba. He’s still there, you know, his head bubbling quietly away. Like us. We had the same kinda story bubbling under a while back. Some other Schirr’s view. Same kind of ending though.
Can still feel how it was to have our guts blasted open. If we could lift our head, see over our chins, we imagine we’d find that hole gaping there now. All the life, just slipping away.
You know we seemed happy before, when the others were gathered round? You probably think we’re such a flake. One minute we’ve got the knives out ready to carve us right up, and the next we’re giggling like a kid on her first date.
Well, we’ve been making sense of stuff, or trying to. A part of us was thinking, we had our voice taken away ten years ago and now it’s come right back. Luck, see. The kind of luck we’ve never had in our life. So, we might be changing but so’s our luck. And we ain’t never had looks neither, so losing them ain’t so bad.
Weird thing is, all this time we’ve wished we was Denni, or Lindey, or anyone ’cept us… the moment we started to change it seemed all right. But we want to hold on to us now. We’re not a frog. Not now we can speak. So we don’t wanna croak now.
We remember… we remember when we came down on some dead village on a sun-scorched world in the outer Argentines. Forget its name. But the Schirr had done a good number on the place when Empire hadn’t pulled out of Idaho by the deadline, and there was nothing there alive when our squad scooted down in the shuttles to check it out. Nothing ’cept this stupid bird.
It was all white, white all over. Sturdy looking thing, too. A swan, or a goose maybe, can’t remember which, we ain’t been on too many nature trails in our time. But the damned thing kept following us around, and honking and stuff, and there was no one round any more to feed it and water it, and it’d be alone once we’d buried the dead and shipped out. We kind of felt sorry for it.
And the bird kept following us around and making this stupid bird noise. So in the end we shot it.
Just a reflex, that was all. Put it out of its misery. But it didn’t know nothing about misery. Maybe it might’ve stayed alive somehow if we’d not been around down there, and all sick with the stuff we’d seen. You know, we can still see it now plain as a hot clear day. That beautiful white bird turned all red and messy. Regretted the shot as soon as we fired it, but what can anyone do? What’s done is done. One hit.
We was gonna kill ourself but we didn’t. Haunt saw to that. Why she’s a marshal and we ain’t making Elite in a hurry, we guess. We feel like that white bird now. Except we bled, and then we got healed. A second chance.
So we lie here and we hold on. We’re holding on. We’re gonna keep on honking like that swan-goose thing. Only, it’s a sweet songbird voice now.
No one to hear it now, in this empty place. No one to see us neither, to tell us what we look like. Floating above the floor on our little bubble looking up at the glass on the ceiling. Holding on.
What you still doing here? I just got the verbal craps. Get out of here.
To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 2 on here
To switch to Roba’s viewpoint, select section 22 on here – then return here
17
Haunt
We snap out of Roba. Clutch hold of ourselves, to know we’re still here. Still us.
‘Well, well,’ says the Doctor.
‘We should kill him now,’ we say.
‘He’s truly becoming one of those Schirr,’ the Doctor says, as if he’s impressed or something. ‘I’ve seen cultures where consumption of a person’s flesh resulted in the eater taking on certain memories, certain characteristics… but this is an altogether more invasive process. The subject is helpless to resist.’
‘So we’re all going to turn this way?’ we ask, though we know it’s true anyway. ‘Each of us into one of them?’
The Doctor nods grimly. ‘And I think DeCaster wants us to know. He wants to feed our fear, to keep us off our guard. To stop us from thinking clearly…’ He gestures at Roba’s bloated, distorted body beneath the fleas. ‘Hence this somewhat graphic demonstration of possession.’
‘Then we should kill Roba, shouldn’t we?’ Creben’s voice sounds over the communicator. Now we can feel him, trying to watch through our eyes. He’s learned to use the network quickly and well. An adept. We can feel the strength of his mind.
‘We should just kill him,’ he says again, ‘spare him all this. Stop DeCaster’s plan.’
‘I agree,’ we say.
‘But what is DeCaster’s plan, hmm?’ The Doctor addresses his question to our wrist for want of something better to focus on. ‘What will killing this poor man achieve?’ The Doctor shakes his head. ‘And where should we stop? Should we take our own lives now, simply give up?’
Creben remains silent. We feel him sulking at the back of our mind.
‘OK,’ we say. ‘Then let’s move on. He lives. But we leave his webset on so we know what he’s doing.’
‘A wise precaution,’ the Doctor agrees. ‘You know, I feel quite distracted and disorientated after that experience. I wonder how the others are getting on, hmm?’
To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 2 on here
To switch to Frog’s viewpoint, select section 16 on here
Creben
We feel we’ve been here for an age, body pressed hard back against the rock, trying to conceal ourself. But the glow bleeding from the stare of the carved eyes makes everything too bright.
We’re noticed the moment the furtive figure rounds the corner.
It’s Ben.
He’s relieved. ‘Creben. I’m glad to see you.’ He frowns at the schematic. ‘You all right? What’s all this?’
‘It’s what we came here to fix. That’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ he says. ‘This is it! We’ll be all right!’
‘We’ll be able to breathe for a while longer, certainly. But since Denni brought us here with the intention of changing us into something else, it was never likely we were going to suffocate before that happened, was it?’
He glares at us, mutters something we don’t understand.
We realise he’s alone. ‘Where’s Tovel? Weren’t you with him?’
‘He’s not good. I had to leave him.’
We look at him suspiciously. ‘Did you now.’
‘Yes, I did. He can’t move, Creben, all right? He’s half-turned into one of them.’
He’s indignant. We feel it’s genuine.
‘Anyway,’ he carries on. He even closes his eyes like he might start crying. We believe he actually feels guilty. ‘The Doctor said I should leave him. S’pose it makes sense. You know, try and help the rest of us before going back to help him.’
‘And what can you do?’ we ask politely.
It’s Haunt’s voice that answers. Screams at us.
‘Do all you can. Work together. Keep the neural network open. That’s an order.’
We catch a whiff of something old and decaying. Glimpse the cold empty face of an angel. As we do so, Haunt’s voice spirals off into nothing.
‘She’s out of the web,’ we say quietly.
‘Dead?’ We don’t answer him. ‘But the Doctor was with her!’
‘I’m still here, my boy,’ comes the Doctor’s answer. He sounds troubled. ‘Marshal Haunt ran on ahead, we saw someone…’
‘Denni?’ Ben asks.
‘It seems highly likely, yes.’
Ben laughs, a brief and bitter sound. ‘Thought this network thing was meant to help us watch out for each other?’
